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| Grandma woke Sam Johnson at 10 minutes to 8. "Sam!" she called upstairs. He rolled out of bed, stepped into his moccasins, and in seven minutes was out the door on the way to his last chemotherapy treatment. Sam, 18, was a high school freshman in December 2003 when his nose and gums started bleeding and a bruise on his arm swelled like a baseball. The diagnosis: acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Sam was one of 3,200 American children diagnosed each year. The chemotherapy regimen lasted 3.5 years, the standard protocol for boys - all of Sam's time in high school. He graduates in June. His life has been a seemingly endless stretch of vomit, sickness, spinal injections, and thousands upon thousands of pills. His father joked that Sam vomited so much from the medicines that "he knew where every waste can in the school was after a while." |
Sam lost his hair. He was rushed from his home in Haddonfield to the emergency room by ambulance when allergic reactions to drugs constricted his airway. He had blood transfusions. He missed so much school that tutors came to the house. "A ton of bad stuff," said Sam. But Friday was his last day of chemo. He arrived at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia specialty-care center in Voorhees by 8:30 a.m. His grandmother, Helen Hamilton, 83, drove him. His parents, Doug and Anne Johnson, were off celebrating their 25th anniversary - postponed since last summer because of his treatments. "We felt kind of safe going, knowing it was so close to the end," his father wrote in an e-mail. "But, other than one other long weekend, we have not been away from Sam during the three-year ordeal. To see him get done now is the most incredibly great event that could ever happen to us." |
TOM GRALISH/Inquirer
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